Goofy appears in 1932 Popeye and his cast in 1933. Soon, though, cartoon characters with personality started taking over. The biggest difference is in how much the characters seem like blackface jokes. You see almost the same personality as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as Bosko and then Foxy over at Warner Brothers. Bimbo is faintly pleasant, kind of playful, a little mischievous, easily intimidated: what you’d get from a talented high school theater class producing their very own Little Tramp sketch. Cartoon characters didn’t lack personality before the early 1930s, but they did tend to be less distinct. My suspicion is that Freddy reflects the discovery of personality. Or why not humanize Bimbo? Why add a new character? If the Fleischers just wanted Betty Boop to pair up with a human, why not Koko the Clown? He was unmistakably human, and had been on screen for fifteen years, and even canoodled a bit with Betty now and then. I suspect that’s not a complete answer, though. It’s repeatedly claimed he was created because under the enforced Production Code Betty Boop couldn’t be dating Bimbo - a dog - once she was finally established as human. But at least as good a question is “Who’s this Freddy person again, exactly?”įreddy, or Fearless Fred, is Betty Boop’s second boyfriend, for a half-dozen cartoons in 19. Last week’s Betty Boop cartoon, Betty Boop’s Life Guard, raised the musical question of “Where’s Freddy?” They put the question in a song that lasted only about two minutes on-screen but which can last in the head for as much as eight years straight.
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